Federal 100: James (Jim) P. Derr

Improved safety and big savings. Derr oversees a program that is on track to save the Federal Aviation Administration $2 billion over 10 years. He helped consolidate 58 flight locations into five networks by automating flight briefings and moving communication tasks between specialists and pilots, along with weather updates and other information, from a telephone- and radio-based process to the Web. As a result, "specialists remain focused on providing safety briefings instead of managing phones, and pilots generally wait just seconds to talk to a specialist when they call," said Sandra Samuel, vice president of transportation solutions at Lockheed Martin.

FCW investigated efforts by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to improve a joint data repository on military and veteran suicides. Something as impersonal and mundane as incomplete datasets could be exacerbating a national tragedy.